The terrific tshirt tale

Last spring BCA held a tshirt design contest for the new school shirt. The staff chose the winner, or in this case winners, and created a modified design combining several favorite elements of the entries. The kids were pleased, and so were we. Now, the trick was,  how to get the tshirt made. Fortunately about the same time of year we were ordering supplies for the next year and we decided to screen printing kit would be a useful tool for the school.

Fast forward a few months. The kit arrived, as well as the tshirts. Somehow Ed and I decided that tshirt making was in our future so over the course of the following two Saturdays we learned the ends and outs of the screen printing process in order to produce this years BCA tshirt of wonder (cue triumphant music).

Here is what went down…

First we had to create a space with no light. In Mali in the middle of the day- that means blocking in a bathroom window!


After a few steps in total darkness (hence no pictures) we shone a bright light on the screen to create the stencil. Notice the elaborate use of brooms, adapters and electrical equipment.
 

The screen was completed and was looking good!!!

 

Next we taped off the edges to make sure there were no extra lines of ink.

 

Setting up the press, we were able to center the image and actually ready to print!

The first shirt actually looked pretty good!

 

It takes a lot of time to get the ink through all the stencil

  

My classroom is starting to look like a workshop!

Last shirt! Ed looks a little tired! 

This next week we will be selling the shirts and soon will have a school picture taken in the royal blue!